The Senate Launches Truth Commission
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/senate-launches-truth-commission.html
According to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate is launching a "truth commission" to investigate Bush-era torture.
Given that torture is ineffective and harms national security, and given that it is illegal and a war crime under international laws which the U.S. is a party to, many argue that there should be prosecutions, and not more investigations.
Indeed, government investigations are almost all whitewashes.
However, Leahy previously suggested a “truth commission” could be modeled after a panel that probed apartheid in South Africa. The commission should have “subpoena power and witnesses would not face charges except if they commit perjury," Leahy told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
I have previously suggested such an approach with regards to 9/11.
Indeed, there is no reason that 9/11 should not be added to the subjects of the commission since - at the very least - Bush officials were criminally negligent in allowing 9/11 to happen and covering up the facts.
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no need to add 9/11 to the topic
There's no need to add 9/11 to this topic, GW. This topic is already 9/11, period. Any investigation into the whys and hows of the interrogations deals with matters we are directly concerned with. On one small slice of interest, given the demonstrated ability of torture to produce unreliable evidence, one wonders whether torture was deliberately applied to paint a false picture. Onward and upward, as sad and grotesque as this is.
OK, but torture is "ineffective"
is a lousy argument. Didn't they crush the insurgency in Central America with the use of torture ?? Actually I just find that (utilitarian?) argument plain offensive.
The Congress
had lower ratings than President Bush. It is a marginalized entity in the eyes of the American public, which is aware that the "representative bodies" are no longer acting in its interest. The formation of a truth commission may be some belated attempt to bring the public back on board, and is unlikely to succeed. The federal government has become such a menace that states are likely to attempt to disengage as much as possible from the Federal process.
Sen. Bernie Sanders sd no need for 9-11 Investigation!
I heard him take a call on the Thom Hartman show this morning, and the caller asked about a "re-, or really just an investigation of the events of 9-11," and he recoiled that there was no need. He then said some crap about "we all know that OBL and his friends were behind it," and blah, blah, blah.
He has a website at www.sanders.senate.gov, and he should be inundated with educational material.